After then-NOPD officer David Warren fired the single shot that killed Henry Glover in Hurricane Katrina's aftermath, Warren was calm and nonchalant, a fellow officer told jurors Thursday during the second full day of testimony.

"I walked over to officer Warren, and he had this really calm demeanor, very nonchalant, and said, 'I shot at him,'" Officer Keyalah Bell testified. "I said, 'shot at who?' [Warren] said, 'they were looting'... those are the only statements he made to me ... It was calm and nonchalant."

His response, according to Bell's testimony, was chilling considering the circumstances: When Bell surveyed the scene outside an Algiers strip mall where Warren and another officer had been stationed, she discovered a towel soaked in a puddle of fresh blood.

In a morning of testimony from law enforcement officials in Warren's retrial, Bell recalled the events of Sept. 2, 2005, and her interactions with Warren. He is charged with depriving Glover of his civil rights and illegal discharge of a deadly weapon.

Defense attorneys tried to discredit Bell's testimony, asking her to explain why her account of that day has, over the years, changed - especially after federal agents visited her home in 2009, leaving behind a manila folder containing the details of their mounting case against Warren.

NOPD Officer Keyalah BellOrleans Parish Sheriff's OfficeBell told the jury that on the day Glover was killed, she and her superior, Sgt. Purnella Simmons, responded to a frantic report that an officer had fired a round at a civilian. When the officers arrived at the scene, Bell met a hysterical Officer Linda Howard, Warren's partner for the day. But Warren, the rookie officer and former engineer who had been wielding his personal assault rifle fixed with a red-dot scope, was cool and collected, Bell said.

Bell said she recognized Warren and the rifle he was cradling. The day before, Bell and Warren had been assigned together to patrol the Algiers strip mall that housed a police substation. At the time, Warren had been on the force just over a year, and Bell only had a few months more experience. Bell told the jury that officers of their rank weren't authorized to carry the type of firearm Warren had.

"We weren't authorized to carry [an assault rifle], so why he had it I'm not sure," Bell told the jury. "I found it strange. The day before I found out he only had a few months less experience than myself. I was not authorized, I had not been trained with a rifle, so to me, it was strange."

But Warren knew his way around a firearm, according to government witness Robert Williams, a former commander of the Police Academy now working as an operator in the city's Office of Homeland Security. Williams on Thursday told the jury that in fact, Warren is such a sharpshooter that he earned a perfect score on his 2004 in-service exam. The prosecution is expected to use that testimony to challenge Warren's prior statements that he believed he missed Glover.

As part of the NOPD qualifying exam, Williams said during his testimony, all NOPD recruits must complete a rigorous training, and pass an exam that includes firearm certification. That test requires a score of 80 percent or more, and consists of 60 rounds, worth two points each. Warren hit all 60: 120 out of 120.

A perfect score, Williams said, "is not frequent but it does occur ... maybe once or twice a year."

All prospective NOPD officers also receive extensive use of force training. Another witness, Officer Charles Badon of the New Orleans Police Academy, administers such training, and testified that "deadly force is always a last resort.

"If there are any reasonable options that can be taken to avoid deadly force, they should be taken," Badon said. "The officer must believe that he fears for his life, and his perception of the threat must be such that it would raise the fears of any person that...they are about to be killed."

During her testimony, Bell said she'd only been at the scene of the Glover shooting for a short time when a dispatch came over the transom: a gunshot victim had arrived at nearby Habans Elementary School, a campus that after the storm housed an NOPD emergency center. Bell and Simmons immediately drove to the school. There, Bell noticed a white car.

When she was first interviewed in 2009, Bell told investigators that she had not seen what was inside the car. But on Thursday, Bell told jurors that indeed she had seen Glover's bloodied body.

After federal agents visited Bell's home in 2009 and took an initial statement, Bell said she began to remember more and more, and hours later called an FBI agent to correct her statement, including the new detail about Glover being in the vehicle.

Jurors did not hear this, but Bell was fired from NOPD in 2012 after she drove drunk and crashed her personal vehicle into a parked car in Algiers the year before. She was reinstated in June of 2013 because the internal investigation exceeded legal time limits.
During cross examination, defense attorney Rick Simmons called into question Bell's motive. Simmons said the agent left a file on the Glover case at Bell's home, before Bell amended her statement. Bell said she didn't look at the file.

Bell, much like Howard who testified Tuesday, said she was so traumatized by the event that her memories had clouded. But as time went on, she began to remember more and more.

"There had been many years where you just get traumatized having to look at it again and again and again and again," Bell said. "When [the agents] left, I started playing everything back. Piece my piece, I remembered seeing [Glover in the car], so I immediately called her back.

"Even now, I see more things," Bell continued. "Playing it back like a video, you can see it like a movie."

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Correction: An earlier version of this article incorrectly described the strip mall where the shooting took place as a makeshift detective bureau. It was a regular police substation for 4th District investigators located in a strip mall.